


I'm fine (I'm so very far from fine)

by Analinea



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt Stiles, I don't know what else, Kidnapped Stiles, M/M, crazy scientists, like I alternate between the two, my cat doesn't want to tag for me anymore, where do I start
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 12:05:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8445172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea
Summary: Ever heard of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Fall Away by Twenty One Pilots (I wanted to do a full song fic of it but I dropped the idea)
> 
> Also, I feel like I'm going back to my most natural style of writing in this and god does it feel good! Anyway!
> 
> Enjoy!

It's been days. They still haven't found him.

Stiles is gone, not as in dead, as in disappeared one night and the only thing left of him is a still running car, headlights cutting through the night, moon giving just enough light to see the blood on the steering wheel and Derek can remember still when he was the one bashing Stiles head on it and he feels so sorry for that but he'll never have the opportunity to say it. He'll never have the opportunity to keep his promise now.

It's what he keeps thinking, what he can't stop thinking, he can tell the thought is worming its way into each of their heads: they'll never find him. He wants to believe that the fear he feels inside comes from smelling Stiles' around the car, but it's been days. The terror, it's all his.

He's pacing in the Stilinski's living room. Everyone else sits, exhausted, but he's wired up, unable to stay still, he wonders if it's how Stiles feels all the time, clings to the present tense he's using when he thinks about him. Stiles _feels_ , Stiles _is_ , Stiles _lives_.

“Run this by me again,” John asks, they've grown closer in the last days because they have a common goal. Because until now the Sheriff didn't really get it, StilesandDerek, couldn't really approve, but what he's been seeing in Derek's eyes in the last few days seems to have made him more lenient.

He also knows that making Derek talk through the facts will calm him a fraction, not much but just enough to settle him. It won't work for much longer: Derek's been doing just that a hundred time but they're no closer to the solution.

“People have been disappearing and bodies were found with weird chemicals in their blood. We think someone is experimenting on them and dumps them when it fails. The same scent was around Stiles' car, so whoever committed these murders have him. They would need a lab and–” Derek stops and yells his frustration out. It doesn't work. It's like his first full moon as a teen, the change just lurking under his skin and ready to take hold of him.

If he transforms, he's never coming back, he knows, he will run and howl and cry and never find Stiles again, sanity lost and with it the hope. Eventually he'll forget. He doesn't want to forget, no matter how hard this is. How much harder it could become. He doesn't want to forget about Stiles.

-

It was a rainy Sunday, and Stiles knocked -he never knocked. He stood there, soaked to the bone, shivering but radiating warmth and happiness, he was holding something behind his back. Derek couldn't smell it, everything was drowned by the scent of water and earth, trees and grass and animals, wet air, petrichor. It reminded him of quiet mornings curled up on the couch with a book, between his mom and Laura.

Stiles smiled, nervous and awkward, and suddenly Derek's face was full of _flowers_.

“The fuck is this?” Derek asked when he could open his mouth without inhaling leaves, but not in anger or irritation. With a laugh that surprised even him.

“I'm asking you out on a date,” Stiles declared with way more confidence than he felt. There were signs, sure, that Derek liked him too. But–

“We can start here and now then,” Derek grinned, and Stiles' face was so bright the sun came out to take a look at the competition.

-

All Stiles can feel is fire in his veins and darkness spreading from his heart to the tip of each of his fingers and toes. He tries to hold on, tries to grasp at the golden days, tries to cling to the feel of Derek's hand in his.

He slowly drowns. He tries to hold on, but all there is is death and blood and strife and chaos and enjoying all of it. All there is in indifference. His heart grows cold.

-

Mr and Mrs Grindlay like to call themselves scientists. They're also batshit crazy, and it's not hard to tell from behind the one-way glass of the Sheriff's station. They only have Mr, and they don't have much time: when her husband will fail to come back, who knows what Mrs will do.

They have Stiles, they smell of him under chemicals and fear and pain, and Derek wants to rip them to pieces, wants to tear at the walls until he has this man's throat between his teeth. Scott, next to him, clenches his fists, knuckles white. John, inside the room, does the same. It's frightening, or it would be if they weren't so worried and angry, what love can make you feel.

It's beautiful, it's passion, it's things going so fast your head spins and it's things going so slow you're finally at peace, it can also be hatred.

It's a worry that gnaw at your bones and cold rage and knowing you could kill or die or both for the ones you love. It's terrifying, realizing that you have all of this inside of your heart, right next to tender touches and kisses.

“What are you doing to my son?” John tries not to yell, barely refrains from slamming his hand on the table. Mr Grindlay smiles.

“We're making him a masterpiece. Ever heard of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Mr Stilinki?” he asks, tilting his head to the side. “We're bringing Hyde out,” he whispers, leaning on the table like he's telling a secret.

Derek feels sick. A deputy, having caught on with the fact that his boss was interrogating a suspect from a case he's not supposed to work on, barges into the room just in time to restrain him. Grindlay shrugs, smiles again like destroying lives and a man wanting to kill him is fucking nothing to him.

-

“Okay, okay, my turn!” Stiles exclaimed, moving backwards and bending his knees, chin raised and mouth wide open, “I'm the melon lord, dude, go for it,” he said without closing it. Derek laughed from where he was sitting on the counter. He closed on eye and raised his hand to it, pretended to take aim and threw the M&M's.

Stiles caught it and whooped after crunching on it.

“I don't really see what the melon lord has to do with this,” Derek said, hoping down the counter and pushing Stiles back with a hand on his face when he came at him with the intent to tackle him.

“Because Toph is freaking badass,” Stiles voice came muffled from behind Derek's fingers, and he bit on one to get revenge. Derek took his hand back with a fake hiss, cradling his hand and falling to the ground.

“You bit me!” he cried, “What will I become? I'm changing into– into a Stiles!” he dramatically finished, letting out a hoompf when Stiles let himself fall on him on the kitchen's floor. They laughed.

They stayed like that for a while, the cold tiles slightly uncomfortable under Derek's head but content to lay with Stiles' head on his chest listening to his heartbeat.

“I love you,” Stiles softly confessed. Derek watched the golden light catching on the dust in the air just right, the smell of home and Stiles and cinnamon and tea all around him.

“I love you,” he said too.

-

Stiles looks up and see metal beams, thinks that this sky is fitting for this new him. He would move, if his wrist and ankles weren't attached, he would get up and find something to kill. He's so angry. He grits his teeth, breathes deep.

He thinks of everything wrong, every petty fights with Scott, his dad, Derek. He thinks of all he things Derek won't do, no matter how many I love you's they share. They argued about it, not so long ago, Stiles thinking Derek was lying because– because why else would he never want to be in public with him and–

Something snaps inside of him, and suddenly the anger fades back and there's fear. Fear for what he just felt, for what he knows he would've done if he had been free. Killing for so little griefs, hating so easily. He's slipping, slowly, more with each injection of the serum. Fire in his veins to burn out all the love, compassion, good inside of him. All he knows about Derek and his insecurities and fears and how he promised, he promised and Stiles apologized, meant it when he said he was sorry, meant it when he said he forgave Derek.

He swallows, tears running down his temples and into his hair. He doesn't want to lose himself. He doesn't want to become this dark thing living inside of him. He hears footsteps, and he closes his fists, tenses his muscles and moves his wrists around even if he knows he'll never snap his bonds. It's the same kind that Oliver used on him, in Eichen's basement, and only the Nogitsune could get out of them.

Oh, god, he's becoming just like the demon.

The woman is alone, this time, and she runs a hand through his hair. He turns his head away, shaking, trying to keep his pleading inside. Begging didn't help him, these last days. He can't help closing his eyes and letting out a whine, a litany of “No” when he feels the needle in his neck.

He doesn't hear the door exploding, too busy losing himself in pain and rage.

-

They hear him scream from the outside. Well, the wolves hear him scream -it started with soft pleads- humans and Banshee are blissfully deaf to it until they barge in, ready to fight. There's nothing to do really, only one enemy and they know they can't do anything to her if they want to know what she gave Stiles.

He's strapped to a metal table with the only light in the room over him, and around there's tables and tables of bottles and beakers and everything that would make a decent lab. Some things were in the making, judging by the smells and the flames under softly bubbling liquids. The scene looks like some sort of medical horror movie.

Stiles looks the part, too, writhing and arching his back, head going back and forth but eyes glazed over. He grits his teeth now, the screaming dying down to muffled groans.

“Are you enjoying out finest piece?” a voice calls, and there is Grindlay two, dressed in a lab coat. She looks immaculate, and it's somehow worse than if there was any blood because then it would mean they have a wound to take care of and Stiles could be helped with only stitches and someone to hold him after his nightmares.

Derek can see the future in that minute. He's not a psychic, but he doesn't need to. Either Stiles will die here, or this little experiment will work and change him. If it does, he'll have the time to hurt them before they manage to catch him without harming him. And Stiles will eventually come back to his senses, and he'll be as good as dead when he realizes what he's done, what he's become. This is not a demon possessing him, it's all him; his rage, his violence.

Derek feels like throwing up the little food he has been able to eat since Stiles went missing. He comes back to the present without having heard a single word that's been exchanged between Grindlay and whoever did the talking, Scott or John. Even when he starts paying attention again, his eyes stay on Stiles, who's calming down slowly, but his eyes never lighten up again. They grow colder instead.

“We have your husband, and if you revert what you've been doing to Stiles, we'll take you to him,” John says with as much calm as he can muster, which is not much: his voice keeps a sharp edge to it. He's surely rather have the Grindlays dead and bloody on the floor of this place than take them back to face justice. That's exactly why he was pulled out of the case in the first place: everyone knows what happens to a Stilinski when you hurt the other one.

The woman freezes for a second, eyes wide. Then her face morphs into a rage she doesn't seem capable of feeling. Both Grindlays acted like psychopaths until now: devoid of any emotion. Clearly that was a wrong assumption, because there she is, screaming and spluttering and before anyone can react, werewolf speed or not, she's at Stiles' side and ripping off his restraints.

John has his gun raised but doesn't dare take a shot when his son is so close, the wolves are shifted and poised to attack, but she doesn't hurt Stiles. She merely set him free and yells at him to kill everyone.

He slowly sits up and turns to her. Derek can hear Scott gasp next to him and he can guess why: in this moment, Stiles probably looks like the Nogitsune.

After moving so slow, the speed with which Stiles strikes Grindlay on the head takes them all by surprise. She falls on a heap and he hops down on the floor. When he turns to them, they know they have to make a decision.

-

They were strolling through the wood, hand in hand, Stiles softly humming one of his favorite songs. He could never stay quiet when they walked, but Derek didn't mind.

“You know,” Stiles finally said, “this is kinda funny.”

“What is?” Derek prompted him when Stiles fell silent, waiting for acknowledgment so he knew he would be listened to.

“Well, you're a werewolf, hair black as a raven,” he declared dramatically, “we're walking in the woods, and do you know what I'm wearing right now?”

Derek turned to him, eyed the red hoodie and couldn't keep his lips from curling up at the corners before he reigned them in and glared at Stiles instead.

“You are not making a Little Red Riding Hood reference,” Derek warned.

Stiles looked at him innocently, not slowing his steps, then after a short silence he opened his mouth and said, “My, what a big–”

He was interrupted by Derek's hand on his mouth, before they both started laughing. Derek dropped his hand and looked back at where he was putting his feet.

“Come one, you have to admit, this had to happen on day,” Stiles chuckled, balancing their joined hand a little. Derek hummed, smiling. “I want a badass title,” Stiles kept going, “and we should all have code names. You would be Big Bad, obviously.”

“What if I want to be Small and Nice?” Derek asked, glancing at Stiles with a grin, “because as far as I know, _you_ are the depraved one.”

Stiles gasped in fake shock, “Derek Hale! You did not call be bad! I'll have you know I'm an upstanding citizen!” he laughed. “Okay then, Small and Nice, what should I be called then? Beasty Boy is already taken, but I can't quite remember by who,” he pretended to think about it.

“I'm going to call you Sourhuman,” Derek replied, and Stiles' eyebrows shot up.

“Sou– oh my god! You remember that? I called you like that _once_ and you're still thinking about it?”

“I resented that!” Derek chuckled, “And giving you a nickname would be redundant, Stiles is already not your real name.”

“I said a title! A code name!” Stiles exclaimed, flailing around. “But I'll be fair and let you some time to think about it, Softwolf.”

-

Scott has a hold on him from behind, his arms under Stiles' shoulders a hand behind his neck. Stiles can only try to kick out with his legs and he's screaming again but this time it's frustration and anger coloring his voice. It's not better than the pain from before.

They all hover, not knowing what to do with their free hands. No one notices movement from the floor, especially when Stiles gets his feet under him and bends at the waist to throw Scott over his head. Stiles is free again, standing still with an air on his face like he's trying to decide who to kill first. Everything is quiet for a second.

Then Grindlay screams “Kill them!” again, rising to her feet. Stiles turns to her with narrowed eyes just as she raises a gun, “Or I will!” she spits out.

Derek can't see Stiles' face from where he is, only his back; and behind that he can see the black hole of the gun's barrel. It's like the thing is sucking the little light there is in the room, and the sounds and smells and feels too, because all Derek can see is how it's pointed directly at him.

She fires the gun. Derek doesn't close his eyes, but he feels like he missed something all the same. Was the gun empty? Did she miss? Was he wrong when he thought she was aiming at him? He looks around and thinks thirty seconds have passed already and nothing moves. But it's not thirty seconds and the gun wasn't empty and she was aiming at him but she didn't miss.

Stiles got in the way.

-

“Emissary, how does that sound?,” Stiles said, munching on his toast, referring to a conversation they had with Deaton the day before.

Derek looked at him over the rim of his mug full of coffee. Black, like his soul, Stiles joked all the time.

They're both exhausted, and under Stiles rambling Derek can smell the guilt pouring off him. Stiles' nightmare kept them up half the night, counting and counting fingers and soothing words whispered in ears too panicked to hear until Stiles' heart calmed down and he took a full breath and started softly sobbing.

Derek looked out the window for a second, loving the green that greeted him there every morning, the sunlight between the trees, the wind chimes ringing that only he could hear. Stiles made them. They were supposed to be a protection, an alarm system, they're just beautiful, dancing in the air and playing with the light.

Derek smiled and looked back at Stiles, his ruffled hair and pillow mark on his cheek, eyes still bright from the two hours of sleep they caught at dawn. Stiles' words died down as he calmed at Derek's peaceful expression.

Derek thought that moments like these were so easily forgotten, condensed with other similar memories until it all became one. One long happy morning. Happy afternoons and happy holidays, Christmas trees, birthdays, gifts, lazing in bed, coming back from work to a warm embrace.

He thought that whatever bad things happened, where your loved ones were concerned you only ever kept the good things with you, when there was enough of them. Even sometimes when there was so little of them.

There is so much joy, with Stiles. He wants it to last forever.

-

“Stiles? Stiles, come on, talk to me,” Derek frantically calls, Stiles cradled in his arms and losing so much blood. They're both panting from different kinds of pain. Tears fall down their eyes. Derek has a second where he wonders if they're the same person, feeling the same agony.

“Derek,” Stiles breathes out quickly before losing his breath again, and when he coughs there's blood on his lips. If only they could stop time. If only they could go back. Derek knows first hand that there's no erasing catastrophes.

All you can have is good times before everything turns to hell and you find yourself standing in the middle of ash and fire and loss and blood, so much blood. Stiles feels so cold under his hands.

Stiles arches his back in pain, closing his eyes, and when he opens them again they're empty. Not as in dead, as in cold and terrifying. He's been slipping in and out of his cold rage in the last minutes, and when he's -what? Derek doesn't want to think Void, because it's so wrong, so wrong, but it's too right when Stiles looks like this- back under the effects of the serum he grips Derek's arm with bruising force. Tries to get up, even reached for Derek's throat at some point before losing strength.

“I'm gonna kill you,” he slurs out. It started harsh and vicious, but even this version of Stiles is starting to lose the battle against the hemorrhage. He coughs again, more blood.

Distantly, Derek can hear the sirens of the ambulance. Distantly, he wonders what the paramedics will think of Stiles weakly trying to kill them.

“I– I lo– love you,” Stiles whispers. His body shakes in Derek's arms. It must be because he's so cold, Derek thinks before curling more around him. Give him warmth, give him time. Don't let him die. He once thought that you only kept the good memories of the ones you loved, but he'll never forget the feeling of blood seeping between his fingers where his hand is pressed on Stiles' chest.

Help comes in just when Stiles stops shaking, stops everything really: holding his head up, contracting his muscles, carrying his own weight, keeping his eyes open. Derek can't make sense of the gasps he hears around him -he forgot about the Pack, Stiles' dad, would feel selfish for being the one to hold Stiles but he can't form coherent thoughts- or the paramedics shouts.

He thinks, for a crazy second, that it's okay. Stiles went to sleep, and he stopped shaking. He's not cold anymore.

-

Derek ran and ran and ran, he never felt like this before. He didn't know what happened, what made this possible, but he was a full wolf and it felt like forgiveness. It felt like his mother and Laura running next to him and hearing their laughs.

Stiles was strangely keeping up with him, running next to him even if Derek was at full speed. Ever since he started his training with Deaton - _I'll never be a druid, I'll never keep the balance. If they come for my Pack, I destroy them-_ he could do incredible things.

Lights like tiny stars around them, powerful wards in the most beautiful forms, trees singing for them when there's no wind, water bubbling up in Derek's paw prints. Butterflies and flowers. Stiles was breathtaking.

-

Derek stares at his red hands, doesn't feel John guiding him to the bathroom and getting rid of the blood for him. Now he stares at his clean hands. They're all waiting, Melissa coming and going as much as she can with as much information as she can gather.

It doesn't look good.

But Stiles is strong, they keep saying, he'll make it. He's magic, he's something else, and Derek thinks that it's true. Sometimes it feels like Stiles is not entirely from this world anymore. He fears he'll not be in this world anymore after tonight.

It makes them all ask for the millionth time, how did he get caught? But Derek smelled the chemicals and knows it did something to his magic, he smelled the poison in the bullet too. He would've died instantly. Stiles was dying agonizingly.

But he can't think like that. Magic is belief, isn't it, and there's magic in everything. Stiles is going to be okay. The surgery will be a success and he'll be stuck in a hospital room for days and hate every second of it but no one will let him get up, they won't leave him out of their sight.

Hours pass.

Melissa comes back with a doctor that changed before meeting them but the smell of Stiles and the serum the Grindlays used still on him. The wolves wrinkle their noses, he doesn't seem to notice. Derek wants to throw himself at the walls and shift and run and smell Stiles under his paws, on him, on every part of his fur and skin, wolf and human and in between. It feels like his heart is out of his chest.

“You can see him in a few hours,” is all he hears because he spaced out again, maybe his brain was so afraid it prepared him for the worst news and canceled his hearing so he wouldn't have to register the words “I'm sorry” and “He didn't make it”. But there was no need to, because Stiles is alive.

“He's not out of the woods yet, but it looks promising,” Melissa smiles. Derek sinks back into the chair he didn't leave for hours. He can wait again. He can wait forever, if there's need to.

-

The fireworks were beautiful. They made Derek's bones rattle with each explosion, and for a second he believed he never felt more alive. Then he remembered, of course, running and laughing and loving. His life turned from a never ending stream of disasters to

the man next to him, family, friends, Pack, wolves, magic, beauty,

life.

-

Stiles wakes up and Derek feels the anguish of the last days flow away as soon as he can see the golden brown of Stiles' eyes. He smiles. Stiles turns to him and does the same.

“Hey there, softy,” Stiles' says with a cracked voice. He coughs lightly and hums in thanks when Derek gives him water.

Silence falls back, but it's comfortable now. It's not the heavy weight of Stiles' unconsciousness. He studies Derek's face like he'll find there every answer. Derek can see the exact moment Stiles remembers what happened. It's a frown and tight lips and then closing his eyes, turning his head away.

“Hey, hey,” Derek breathes out, grabbing Stiles' chin to make him look back at him. “You're okay now. We're all okay.”

“But I–” Stiles starts, hesitates for a moment, “I could've killed you.”

“Don't be so dramatic, we had you under control,” Derek lies with a chuckle. Stiles could have killed one of them before they managed to restrain him efficiently. But he didn't, that's what matters.

“I was bad, Derek, I could feel it. And it felt _right_ ,” he insists, shaking a little. Derek wipes the tears that start to fall down Stiles' cheeks.

“But you came back,” he whispers, “and you came back to save me,” he smiles. And he promises, they'll find a way to be safe. Nothing hurts them anymore. No one touches Stiles again, no one adds to his nightmares and his guilt and his pain, Derek will make sure of it. He'll bury all the tears under love and soft words and quiet touches and with time and Stiles' magic to help, he knows something beautiful will grow from it.

They're alive. Stiles is not alright yet, he won't be for some time. But he will be. They will be. They can do anything, starting now.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very very serious when I say that the tiniest comment is gold guys :) Kudos are good too, obv ^^  
> I'm also on [tumblr](http://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com)
> 
>  
> 
> (I can't stop laughing because chrome wants me to change "They can do anything, starting now" to "They can do canyoning, starting now")


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